Have you ever really thought about how our society got to the place it is now…a place where every topic has become divisive?  We are a society that praises individuality and at the same time shames or turns against people who don’t think the same. 

Does this make any sense at all?

While you’ve no doubt seen this and you may have even experienced it personally, you are probably thinking how is this related to raising teens who are prepared for adulthood?  And my answer is underdeveloped or the lack of social skills can play a big part in the extremes we are seeing in our divisive society today.

As parents of teens our only hope is to teach our teens, the next generation, differently.  We need to ensure our teens have strong and well-developed social skills.  Helping our teens develop active listening skills, critical thinking skills, take pride in teamwork, and learn to have empathy towards others and have acceptance of others who think and believe differently than us could go a long way to change our future society.

Here are a few of the first Social Skills we should begin teaching our teens now to change the future.

Effective Communications – A Must Have Social Skill

Possibly the most important Social Skills to ensure our teens have mastered is having effective communication skills.  The reason effective communication is the most important social skill is that it is the foundation of many other social skills.  It affects so many areas in a person’s life and their relationships with others.  If effective communication is underdeveloped, it will be hard to get traction on many of the other life skills, especially other social skills.

Effective communication is a complex skill and relies on mastering a combination of several other important sub-skills.  Some of those sub-skills are the ability to read body language, understand the tone in which something was said, listening to learn instead of listening to speak, as well as speaking humbly and with confidence.  Because this is a complex skill, give your teen grace as this skill will take time and lots of practice to master.  This is one of those skills that can’t be learned in one interaction or one lesson.

Luckily, teens usually have lots of opportunities for practicing their communication skills through school, extracurricular activities or clubs, and just being involved and interactive with their friends.  As a parent, it is important that you observe some of their interactions within your family or even when they are interacting with others during extracurricular activities, clubs, or their friends.  This is important as they will need constructive feedback or tips from a trusted source as they continue to practice effective communication skills.

Develop Empathy Skills

Another important social skill is being able to show empathy towards others.  Empathy is the willingness to recognize and understand how another person is feeling in a particular moment or situation.   

One very important thing to remember about empathy is in order to really have empathy for others, one is willing to extend their compassion and understanding to not only those who are similar or think just like them, but also to those who are different or who have different opinions and beliefs than them.  Another important aspect about showing another person empathy is empathy should not rely on how you feel or your beliefs about the situation that brought about the other person’s feelings.

While with some people empathy is an innate behavior and comes more naturally for them than others.  For those that empathy does not come naturally, it can be taught and easily practiced within your family unit.  Since family members are more likely to let down their guard with each other and show more feelings when they are at home, this is a great practicing ground for learning empathy skills.

As we discussed earlier, many of the effective communication sub-skills can also help your teen when practicing other skills.  And this is true for the skill of empathy.  Being an active listener will help your teen learn more about how the other person is feeling.  Really listening to someone shows them you care.  Also, watching body language for the person who is hurting or listening to the tone as they are speaking can help your teen recognize a person is hurting.  Mastering and putting all these communication sub-skills to use in these situations will help your teen show others empathy.

Learning to Resolve Conflict Will Strengthen Social Skills

The last important social skills we will discuss in the post is conflict resolution.  We need to teach our teens to understand that in life there will be conflicts with others.  The reason life brings about conflict from time to time is we are all individuals with different thoughts, opinions, and beliefs.  This is totally normal and there is absolutely nothing wrong with having different thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. 

However, because there will be conflict with others, we need to teach our teens to practice the skill of conflict resolution.  Conflict resolution does not always mean that the resolution will be perfect and everyone involved will be as happy as everyone else.  Sometimes conflict resolution will require compromise.  And compromise usually means one or more people involved don’t get everything that want out of the resolution.  Compromise means that the majority involved feel satisfied that the resolution provides some aspects of what they were hoping for.  So, teaching our teens the sub-skill of compromise can be very beneficial during conflict resolution.

We also need to teach our teens how important it is to be respectful during a conflict.  Showing respect during a conflict can help deescalate the situation.  This is super important because if a conflict escalates it can get out of control and it will be much harder to come to a resolution.  A few ways to show respect during a conflict are to be polite to those involved, focus on the root issue, avoid personal insults, and allow each person time to speak without interruption.  And we can’t forget to turn back to the sub-skills of effective communication encourage respect and conflict resolution.

Our teens should also be taught that even after trying to resolve a conflict, there may be times when it just can’t be resolved.  At this point is important to learn how to respectfully agree to disagree with someone and move on without judgement, anger, or resentment.

Our Next Steps With Social Skills

Now that we have reviewed three social skills, our next step is to help our teens learn to prepare them for adulthood, you can see why these are some of the hardest skills to teach!  The truth is many of us still struggle with these skills!  But don’t let that stop you from teaching your teen.  We can practice these skills right alongside of them to better ourselves as we are preparing our teens.

Our teens are the future.  Empower them with well-developed social skills and change the future! 

If you would like to learn about other life skills that are essential to teach teens to prepare them for adulthood, check out Essential Life Skills for Teens.